Swallowing My Pride
by Systematic Overload
Summary: Months after leaving her boyfriend, Rachel asks to meet with him, only to discover how bad it's been for him. She admits how terrible it's been for her, revisits the night she left, and begs for forgiveness. *Based on "Back To December" by Taylor Swift.*


_Welcome! This is a Puckleberry Songfic to Taylor Swift's "Back To December."_

_If you aren't okay with Angst, I suggest you leave this page immediately and find something a bit happier._

_Although, even Angsty!Puckleberry is nice sometimes:)_

* * *

_I'm so glad you had time to see me._

_How's life, tell me, how's your family?_

_I haven't seen them in a while._

Rachel Berry walked into the near deserted coffee shop, her eyes scanning for the once familiar face. Her ex-boyfriend, Noah Puckerman, had agreed to meet her at his workplace an hour before closing time in hopes that not many people would be around. His hopes had been met. There was only one man in the shop; an older gentlemen who was sipping coffee and reading a newspaper.

There he stood, leaning on the counter, a cold stare on his place. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart thumped against her ribs. After all this time, he still took her breath away.

"Hello Noah," she greeted, pulling her coat tight against her body. He looked up and met her gaze with a blank stare, as if he was amazed that she had actually shown up. It made that ache in her chest worsen, seeing him so empty.

"Hey," he replies shortly, closing the magazine that he was reading so he can back away from the counter, like being too close to her would kill him.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me, and of course, thank you for finding the time. It means a lot to me."

He doesn't say anything, just continues to look at her. She can tell that he's questioning her. Why is she here? Why is she doing this? Why is she subjecting him to all of this pain yet again?

"How's your mother, your sister?" she asks, sitting on one of the chairs.

"Mom's good. She's finally getting over the fact that you all but fucking left me at the altar. Finally accepting the fact that you're fucking gone, you know? Sarah's a different story. She's still crushed. She was going to ask you to be her maid of honor at her wedding, but you went on one of your typical diva rampages and left before she got the chance to ask you. Did you know she got married? Has a kid? Do you even care?"

She's taken aback by his harsh words and tone, and she bites her lips to keep the tears at bay. She knows he's hurt, that he's still torn up over the way things ended. She knows that, and she can't fix it.

This time, it's her that says nothing.

_You've been good, busier than ever,_

_we small talk, work and the weather._

_Your guard is up and I know why._

They sit in silence for a moment, Rachel's gaze falling to the hardwood countertop as Puck's gaze settles on her. He's staring at her intently, looking for any indication that she's not okay. Her bottom lip is sucked inside her mouth, her teeth nibbling on it. She appears to be okay, but if he only knew the emotional battle that's going on inside her head.

"How have you been?" she whispers, tearing her eyes from the counter to look at him. She sees the hurt and the anger in his eyes, but she can't fix it. She can't take back what she said that night, all that time ago. The words forever replay in her mind, a constant reminder than she let go of the best thing in her life.

"Busy, actually. It takes my mind off shit. I practically fucking live here. Try to spend as much time as I can with Sarah or Ma. I can't stand that shitty apartment." He almost says "with you not there," but he bites his tongue. Too late for that.

"How has your music career been going? I read a piece in a magazine about your song. It's a lovely song, Noah. I always knew you had-"

"Cut the crap, Rachel," he snaps, sending a glare her way.

Her mouth snaps shut, unspoken words lost in her throat. He continues to stare at her, noticing her fearful expression as the same one she wore the night she dropped the roses and told him she could no longer be with him. She said she was scared. He didn't believe her. Now, the look in her eyes makes him think otherwise.

An apology is on the tip of his tongue, but he catches himself before the words escaped. He has nothing to apologize for, nothing to feel guilty about. _She_ left him. _She _broke his heart. It's _her_ fault.

_Because the last time you saw me is still burned in the back of your mind._

_You gave me roses, and I left them there to die._

_He walks up her driveway, red roses in hand, only to see her fathers' car in the driveway, them hugging their daughter as if they were saying goodbye. Then he sees the suitcases, but they don't belong to the two elder Berry men. They're the signature suitcases Rachel bought from Calvin Klein's SOHO collection after she received her first paycheck. _

_This didn't make sense. Rachel wasn't supposed to be going anywhere._

_Puck jogged up the driveway, an uneasy feeling settling in the center of his chest. He catches Hiram's eye, and he knows that it's bad. Rachel's still hugging her other father, listening to the darker gentleman whisper sweet reassurances in her ear. Puck can't hear the words, but he makes out a small phrase. "He'll forgive you." _

_That's when she turns around, her eyes puffy and tears staining her cheeks. He immediately goes to her, wrapping her in his embrace. He's confused, scared even. His girlfriend might be crazy, but never like this. The only time she's ever cried like this was when they had the pregnancy scare a few months ago._

_He even wonders why she's at the house she rents in the Upper West Side. Normally she stays at his apartment in Manhattan, but she asked him to meet her at her house tonight._

_The pad of his thumb, callous covered due to his guitar playing, wipes away the tears falling from her eyes as he pulls away to look at her. The roses are still in his hand, but after the look she gives him, they seem to go limp._

"_I picked these up for you after work," he murmured, putting the roses in her arms._

_Leroy gasps and Hiram lets out a soft cry in the background. This boy—no, man—is in love with their daughter, willing to do everything for their daughter, and it's so hard to watch the ordeal when they know how it's going to end._

"_I'm leaving, Noah," she whispers, her head hanging low. She can't look at him._

"_I'm coming with you," he says immediately, taking her hand in his._

_She rips her hand away, a fresh batch of tears escaping down her face. She just shakes her head, unable to speak, unable to say anything. Her fathers watch from behind, watch the heartbreak flash across his face. Noah Puckerman is determined, but so is Rachel Berry._

"_I'm coming with you, Rach."_

"_Noah, I don't want you to come with me." _

_He stares blankly at her, trying to process the piece of information. He knows from the look in her eyes that she's serious. She doesn't want him to come._

"_So that's it? You're fucking breaking up with me? After all we've been through? The songs, your dreams? You're just going to walk away from this?" he shouts, his hands balled into fist, anger coursing through his veins._

_The two men in the background stare in shock, but they don't defend their daughter. They don't involve themselves. They just stare, watching the way a few tears fall silently down Noah's cheeks. They've never seen him cry. No one has._

"_HUH? Is that what you're going to do, Rach? You're just going to fucking leave even though you knew I was going to ask you to marry me on your birthday in a week? December 18__th__. I fucking remembered Rachel, how you said you always wanted to be proposed to on your birthday. I bought tickets to that stupid dumbfuck musical you wanted to go see. Booked us diner reservations. You're just going to leave?" The last question is soft. Pleading. "Don't go."_

"_Noah, don't. Please don't do that," she begs, sniffing loudly as she tries to regain a sliver of her composure._

_He isn't going to win. He knows that. He isn't going to get her to stay. So he runs. He turns and he jobs back to the end of the driveway, hops into that ridiculous Mercedes Rachel convinced him to buy, and peels out of the driveway so fast that the tire screech and the smell of burnt rubber fills the air._

_The roses fall to the pavement, never to be touched again. She doesn't say anything to her parents, she just loads her suitcases into the back of her SUV. _

_They watch her go, both knowing that she made the biggest mistake of her life._

_So this is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you, saying I'm sorry for that night._

_And I go back to December all the time._

_It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you, wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine._

_And I go back to December, turn around and make it all right._

_And I go back to December all the time._

"I'm sorry," she whispers, so softly that she isn't sure if he'll hear the words that she means so much.

"Too late," he replies nonchalantly, as if her apology doesn't mean a thing. It does, but he can't let her know.

"I miss you," she tries again, tries to apologize.

"Too late."

"Will you listen to me, Noah? If I do apologize?"

"Start talking, Berry. You got a lot to say."

"I'm sorry, Noah. For leaving you without so much as an explanation. Without giving you some sort of information as to why I felt I could be in a relationship with you. I'm sorry that I hurt you. I'm so sorry, Noah."

"That's i-"

"Let me finish, please. You have every right to be mad at me, Noah. Furious with me, repulsed by me. You have that right, and I'm not telling you to not be mad at me. If I was in your position, I would hate me too, I promise you that. However, please, please try to see it the way I saw it," she pleads.

He looks up, his gaze holding hers. He listens.

_These days I haven't been sleeping._

_Stayin' up late, playing back myself leaving._

_When your birthday passed and I didn't call._

"I haven't slept for more than a few hours at a time these days. I suppose it's given me time to think about things. Time to process the emotions that I felt, the emotions that I'm feeling. I've played back that scene in my head so many times, letting those roses fall to the ground, telling you I couldn't go on like that. It haunts me, Noah, and I can never fully express how sorry I am."

The older gentleman who was sitting in the back had left, the clock showing it was well past seven o'clock, way past closing time. Rachel focuses her gaze on the coffee mug while her ex-boyfriend looks at a whole in the wall, his ears open, but his eyes unable to look at her now that she's revealing why she left him.

"I told your mother I'd call you on your birthday, let you know that I was okay, that I was trying to figure things out. I suppose she told you that I was going to call, and then I never did. I picked up the phone, dialed your number, and I couldn't call you. You were better without me, I believed that blatant lie. I convinced myself that it was true. You deserve so much more than a girl who isn't sure, Noah. You deserve a girl who loves you with all of her heart and knows that you're the one. I didn't call because I didn't know what to say. What was I supposed to say?"

He stayed up all night waiting for that phone call, hoping that she'd tell him she was coming back. He checked his phone even when it didn't ring, checked it when it did. He got 17 calls that night, not a single one of them her. Santana called and asked how he was, followed directly by Brittany's call where she sung happy birthday with Santana harmonizing in the background. Quinn called and asked him if he'd heard from Rachel yet, and when he said no she gave him a frustrated sigh and told him that Rachel would came back around. Matt Rutherford called and told him that he'd seen Rachel. Puck hung up on him, only to call back twenty minutes later and demand a full rundown. Matt wasn't mad.

"I waited for that phone call, you know," he admits, shaking his head sadly. He asks himself why he's subjecting himself to this pain. Her apology should mean nothing. He's supposed to hate her, demand answers as to why she left.

"I know."

_Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times._

_I watched you laughing from the passenger side,_

_and realized I loved you in the fall._

"Remember that roadtrip we took? Going from Lima to New York because we were young, bored, and stupid? Summer of senior year and my dads nearly died because we never gave any notice. You laughed because I took a wrong turn. You laughed a lot that summer, Noah. You deserve that amount of happiness. You deserve more than that."

He wanted to protest, saying that the only thing he wanted was her, but he couldn't. She hurt him. She broke his heart. She went willingly.

"I discovered that I loved you that fall, when you followed me all the way to New York University because you thought it would make me happy. It did make me happy, Noah, oh so happy. It seemed as though every fall since, I discover just how much I love you. I do love you. So, so much."

Her last words are a whisper, and he ignores them. What is he supposed to say? He can't forgive her. He wants to, but the words won't fall from his tongue. Why does she make this so hard? Why is it so impossible to hate her?

"Right before I left, I knew that I loved you. I want you to know that. I loved you then, and I love you now."

"Why'd you leave?"

_But then the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind._

_You gave me all your love but all I gave you was goodbye._

"I was scared, Noah. My dreams, I forgot them. You were changing my life. I was going to say yes when you asked me to marry you. That was never in my plan, Noah. My dreams were changing and I couldn't handle that." Her eyes began to well up with unshed tears, tears that never been cried because she convinced herself that it was the best thing for them.

"So you couldn't fucking talk to me about that?" He shouts, his own anger and tears bubbling to the surface.

"You wouldn't have understood! Being on Broadway was my dream. Winning three consecutive Tony Awards was my dream. Men in my life came and went, but my dreams always pushed me forward, my dreams kept me going. My dreams gave me a reason to live. You were changing those! Marrying you became my dream, and Broadway fell off of my radar. It scared me!"

"YOU LEFT ME!"

"I KNOW. DON'T YOU THINK I REMEMBER THAT EVERY DAY? Every day, Noah. I look at your picture every day and I ask myself why I never came back, why I left you. I was foolish!"

They sit in silence for a moment, looking at each other as tears silently roll down her cheeks. It isn't until this moment that she realizes how much she hurt him. He never noticed until now how broken she was, how much remorse she had.

"I don't understand," he admits. "Why couldn't you talk to me? Tell me how you felt and we could have fucking dealt with it. You left me. You fucking broke my heart and you think you can just come back here, apologize, and it'll make everything fucking fine again? You don't get to do that, Rachel! You left me! I thought we were okay, Sarah was making plans for the wedding even before you said yes, and then you just fucking left me! Why?" he whispers, the sadness in his eyes overwhelming. For the first time in her life, she sees Noah Puckerman cry.

"I thought I would have to give up my dreams for you. My dreams that have been with me through everything. I thought you'd ask me to give them up just like Finn did. Just like Jesse. I couldn't do that again. I'm Tinkerbell. I need applause to live. I had to pick, and I chose Broadway."

"You never had to pick," he snarls.

_So this is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you, saying I'm sorry for that night._

_And I go back to December all the time. _

_It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you, wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine._

_And I go back to December, turn around and change my own mind. _

_And I go back to December all the time._

"I know that now, Noah. I didn't back then. I was scared. Scared of falling deeper in love with you. Scared that I might have to give up the only thing that kept me going in my life, that made the years of torment and terror worth it. It doesn't justify a thing, but my dreams have never failed me. Not like everyone else has."

He does understand what she means, but it's hard to wrap his head around it. She looks vulnerable, broken, and scared. He hates that he made her feel this way. The pang in his chest when she mentions how people failed her reminds him that he failed her too. They failed each other.

"I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. Why would I? I never stopped loving you. Ever."

"Don't say things like that, Rach." His voice is pleading. He can't do this. He can't let her walk back into his life when he's just become functional without him. He loves her, but he's torn. She hurt him, intentional or not.

"Say the truth, Noah? You don't want me to tell you the truth? Would you rather I lie to you?"

"Tell me you found someone else. Tell me you're happy with someone else. Tell me you're doing this out of sympathy. Tell me you fucking pity me so I can give up hope and finally move on," he begs.

Rachel feels the cold rush down her spine, his words hitting her square in the chest. She shakes her head, swallowing the lump in her throat and prepares to speak. She needs him to know that she's not okay, that she needs him to carry on with her life. She's not Rachel Berry without Noah Puckerman.

_I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile, so good to me, so right._

_And how you held me in your arms that September night, the first time you ever saw me cry._

_Maybe it's wishful thinking, probably mindless dreaming,_

_but if we loved again, I swear I'd love you right._

"I can't lie to you. I'm miserable without you. There's never been another. Not a single one."

His fist slams against the counter and the brunette jumps in surprise. "Stop saying those things! You don't love me. You don't miss me. You don't want to be with me. You never wanted that, you never loved me. Why can't you just admit that you didn't want to marry me so you left? Stop lying to me Rachel. Even when you claim to tell the truth, you're still fucking lying. How can you do that to someone you apparently love? Oh, I know, it's because you never loved me to begin with!"

"I do miss you, Noah! I miss everything about you. I miss the way you held me in the morning when I didn't want to go to rehearsals, the way you left your boxers all over the apartment even when I told you to pick up. The way you'd just show up at the house when we got into an argument and I'd drive off. I miss you. It's empty without you there. I can't function without you. I'm lost, Noah. Do you remember in September, when I told you I loved you? You held me when I cried because I thought you'd run away because you were scared of commitment? That's what I did!"

He knows that feeling. He watched her cry for an hour, terrified that he would leave because he couldn't handle commitment. He never got a word in edgewise so he could tell her that he wasn't going to leave. That was the difference between Noah and Rachel. Noah stood up and faced it like a man, Rachel ran away.

"I know you can't go back to what we were right away, but you still love me, and I still love you. I know you still love me, Noah. Please tell me you still love me. _Please."_

"I don't love you," he replies painfully. It's a lie. He loves her so much. He loves her enough to let her go.

"You do love me! You do, Noah! I see it in your eyes! You love me! Tell me you love me, say it."

"I can't."

_I'd go back in time and change it, but I can't._

_So if the chain is on your door, I understand._

"I want to go back and change it. All of it. I'd erase myself leaving. I'd stay, we'd work through it. I'd have my dream and you'd have yours. I would have you. I want to take it all back. Every word I said, the roses. I want to change it so badly, but I can't. I can't change it. I can't take back anything I said, but oh how I want to," she says, her hand brushing against his before he pulls away as if he was burned.

"You're right. You can't fucking change it. This doesn't change anything. You don't get to just walk into my life and expect to have a place in it after what you did." He can't look at her. He wants to take her back, to kiss her fears away, to assure her that he forgives her and that he still loves her, but he can't. How can he?

"Please, Noah-"

"DON'T 'PLEASE NOAH' ME. You don't get to do this Rachel! It's not always about you! Do you not get it? Has the last 30 minutes been blank for you? I'm finally okay without you. I finally get to live my life again. Why can't you just accept that? Why don't you just leave so I can move on? Why can't you let me go, Rachel? Why? Why is this some fucking game to you? I don't want to play!" He has tears in his eyes again, and a few visibly race down his cheeks.

"This isn't a game! If you gave me another chance I would never let you down again. I would love you like you deserve. I still love you, Noah. I never stopped!"

He doesn't say anything, launching them into an uncomfortable silence as they speak with their eyes. Hers hold promise, the promise that she'll never hurt him again. His beg her to keep that promise.

"If you can't do this, I suppose I understand. I'm sorry, Noah. I will always love you, just know that. I wish you joy, and happiness, and some day, you will make a wonderful girl so insanely happy." She stands, gliding over to the door of the coffee shop, before turning to look at him once more. "Goodbye, Noah."

She sees the emotion on his face, sees the hurt he's going through. He wants her to leave, but he needs her to stay. He can't deny that he's in love with Rachel Berry. He watches as she pushes the door open and pulls her coat tighter against her body. He can let her go, or he can ask her to stay. It's the biggest decision of his life.

"Rachel," he yells out, choking back a very unmanly sob. "Wait."

_So this is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you, saying I'm sorry for that night._

_And I go back to December all the time. _

_It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you, wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine._

_And I go back to December, turn around and make it alright._

_And I go back to December, turn around and change my own mind. _

_And I go back to December all the time._

His words stop her dead in her tracks, and she turns around. It seems to happen in slow motion, how she runs to him, throwing herself into his arms. Her salty tears wet his t-shirt, the damp fabric scratching her nose as she shakes her head in disbelief. He wants her, he still wants her. He still loves her and that's all that matters. Noah Puckerman still loves Rachel Berry, and Rachel Berry is helplessly in love with Noah Puckerman.

Their lips collide a few seconds later, teeth clashing and hands exploring the territory that is both familiar and new. It's been so long since they were wrapped in each other's warm embrace, since they felt as if there was hope for them.

That's what their kisses are; a promise of future, commitment, love.

She pulls away first, looking into his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Noah," she whispers, her thumb stroking his cheek.

"I know, baby. It's not going to be easy, I fucking know that, but you're right. I do love you. Just… don't do that again. I can't promise that things are going to go back to the way they were any time soon, but we have to try, Rach, we have to."

"Yes. We have to."

Her lips press against his once more, sealing their promise with a kiss.

Rachel couldn't go back to December and change what happened, but she could try to make things better now.

_All the time._

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_Review? :)_


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